New online crime maps for England and Wales, which cost £300,000 to develop, have been launched on February 1st this year. By entering a street name or postcode, users can see which offences have been reported in their local streets within the past month. Information on crime is broken down into in six categories; burglary, robbery, vehicle crime, violence, other crime (including sex crimes, theft and shoplifting) and anti-social behaviour.

On the first day, the website had received 75,000 hits/min, and the Home Office was forced to call a halt just hours after its launch when it crashed repeatedly under the strain of 18million hits an hour (Daily Mail article). The website got both positive and negative reaction. House owners and developers worry that the information could increase fear and slash house prices in some areas.

私も試しにやってみた。郵便番号をインプットすると、犯罪発生エリアと発生数を示す黒丸が地図上に浮かび上がる。

I tried myself as well: when I put my post code, black dots with crime numbers, indicating streets where the crimes happened, appeared on a map.

数字をクリックすると、犯罪の内訳が見れる。

You can see what kinds of crimes occurred and itemized numbers when click those black dots.

Crime mapping of London by Metropolitan Police. In general, London’s crime rate is around average, except some parts of central London. When you zoom in the map, you can see the details in each area of the city.

Found guilty of assault on a policeman and sentenced to six years in prison, an 18-year old French-Arab orphan Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) can neither read nor write, as he left school at the age of 11. Arriving at the jail alone, he appears younger and more fragile than the other convicts. Cornered by the Corsican Mafia leader César Luciani who rules the prison, he is given a number of “missions” to carry out, toughening him up, and wins the trust of the mafia leader. While he is working for Corsican Mafia, Malik, unafraid and a fast learner, also creates his own network with Muslim inmates as well. Balancing between Corsicans and Muslims, he discreetly develops his drug dealing business and works his way up through the criminal ranks, becoming a leader of all of France’s immigrant suburbs.

The film is so intriguing and absorbing that I didn’t feel its screening time of 150 min at all. The film shows us harsh realities of a life in prison, survival and battle between different groups, without glamor. A rise of Muslim inmates from former French colonies in north Africa, reflect social problems that French society is facing, such as lack of education, poverty and discrimination. I don’t usually fancy a jail movie, but I think A Prophet is thought-provoking, well-made move of its genre. It is a success story that young and naive immigrant teenager survives on his own quick-wittedness and charm, and climbs up to the top of the criminal underworld. Malik’s success story may be fascinating for us who live in a different world from him, but what he does in the movie is opportunistic, immoral, and is a crime. I hope Malik won’t be a role model for many young poor immigrants, who can’t dream of ‘normal’ success in a society where they don’t feel belonging to.

Now in mid-December and in the height of party season, I often see this CABWISE advertising campaign on TV, newspapers or at the bus stops. It is so real and terrifying as a woman myself, and I would think the campaign is successful to alert women about the problem of illegal minicabs

There are 2 types of taxicabs in London: Hackney carriages (Black cabs) and Private hire (Minicabs). Black cabs can be flagged-down in the street or hired from a taxi rank. Minicabs must have a license issued by the Public Carriage Office, and cannot be hailed in the street and must be pre-booked. Though it is illegal, there are some illegal minicabs, with no pre-booking and with or without license, waiting for the possible customers outside nightclubs and bars, especially on weekends, and the sexual attacks on female customers by these illegal minicab drivers is a serious concern in London. Thanks to a series of advertising campaigns these years, the number of women using illegal cabs has fallen from 1 in 5 in 2003 to fewer than 1 in 20. However, the Met still recorded 93 minicab-related sexual offences in 2008-9, although that was down from 120 the previous year – which means that still average of 8 women a month become a victim of such crimes.

This year again, a new cinema, TV and poster campaign has been launched, under the name of Mayor of London together with Metropolitan Police, City of London Police, and Transport for London, urging women to use official minicabs or black cabs during the Christmas party season. The campaign also encourage people to use CABWISE, launched in 2006: text CAB to 60835 to get the numbers of one taxi and two licensed minicab firms, in the area you are texting from using GPS. Now more and more Londoners get to know about CABWISE and use the system, thanks to the campaigns. Police will also target touting hotspots and illegal minicab drivers, but please be careful everyone!

M got a new vehicle number plate for his vespa. His number plate was cloned and he got 2 PCN (penalty charge notice/traffic ticket) from the borough we’ve never been. When we received the first ticket in October 2008, we thought it was just a mistake. We realized that someone else had been using M’s registration number when we saw CCTV images we requested – same registration number but different driver with similar but different vehicle. In order to prove M’s innocence, we spent a lot of time and effort. First we contacted the borough in charge and we were told to get a Crime Reference Number (CRN) from the police. We took a photo of M with his moped and brought it to the police to confirm the difference from the images in CCTV. Then we went to other police station (I will cut the story why we had to go to 2 police stations as it is too complicated) to get a CRN after long waiting and persistence against a police officer’s reluctance of issuing it as “police cannot do anything about this matter.” Then we sent the CRN to the Borough and reported the incidence to DVLA（Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency), we thought it was all over.

After 3 months, we received a new PCN and had to repeat the appeal process again… So we requested DVLA to issue a new registration number. They usually don’t issue a new number but they gave us a permission due to this special circumstance. With a letter from DVLA on our hand, we went to a DVLA office in Wimbledon, taking over an hour to get there, and got ‘Number Plate Authorisation Certificate’. Then, we got a new number plate at our local motorcycle shop. The case closed, hopefully. But why WE had to do all these things – we are the victims!! Unfortunately police is completely helpless with the cloning motor vehicles at this moment.

Currently there are as many as 10,000 cloned cars on our roads in UK. Many cases, criminals make a ‘clone’ of another car by replacing the number plates on their car with the stolen registration plates from an almost identical vehicle of the same make, model and even colour. Another case criminals obtain replica plate from websites who sell replica plates with no proof of ID. The cloned vehicle can be used for law-breaking activities ranging from getting away without paying for parking tickets, speeding fines or driving off a petrol station without paying, or in the worst case scenario, they can be used in more serious crimes such as organised crime and terrorist activity. We just wanted to avoid a possible trouble of M getting arrested for a crime he has never committed. Be careful – but what can we do to protect us from cloning, if someone steal your number without your knowledge???